Tracks And Descriptions
What's the right track for my proposal? Which delivery method is right for me? Here's a description to get you started.
Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging in the Digital Age:
Exploration of topics in this area advances the retention and belonging of faculty, staff, and students. Important sharing of information around best practices in attracting, recruiting, and retaining a wide range of employees and students.
Example topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Exploration of one’s identity
- Creation of personal and campus action plans
- Reflection upon current practices
- Development of a framework for implementation
Innovation and Emerging Technologies:
Information technology has been evolving at a rapid pace, including artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, and other important trends. Information sharing around these topics is vital to keeping abreast of the latest developments.
Example topics may include, but are not limited to:
- ChatGPT
- New AI apps
- VR in the classroom
- Hands-on experimentation with products
Leadership and Change Management:
Effective leadership takes place at all levels of an organization. We are continually asked to respond to changing client expectations, resource constraints, increasing calls for accountability, and proliferating technology alternatives. We seek to showcase strategies, both successful and not-so-successful, to create a shared sense of mission and allow all team members to contribute their ideas.
Example topics may include but are not limited to:
- Developing and advocating for a shared vision
- Creating and sustaining high-performance teams
- Divergent paths to leadership, and leadership in every area and level
- Promoting diversity, inclusion, and equity in your organization
- Strategic planning and strategic planning tools
- Innovative budgeting and funding models
- Aligning governance models and processes with institutional mission
- Succession planning
- Communication best practices
- Cross-organizational / cross-institutional professional networks
- Unconventional leadership
- Creative project management
- Building a culture of innovation and managing change
- Talent management
Libraries and Scholarship in the 21st Century:
As libraries seek to redefine themselves in the 21st century, branching out into content creation, makerspace management, and new partnerships around teaching, learning, and scholarship, the opportunities – and questions – for how libraries will lead the information age can seem overwhelming. What collaborative partnerships, decisions, and technologies should librarians use in scholarship and research? What strategic innovations can libraries share to help establish a new relevancy model in colleges and universities? And given the continual pressure to justify budget requests and resource allocations, how can we define and develop new organizational structures and services? This track encourages the sharing of provocative ideas, ongoing projects and plans, and early-stage successes that can help our community begin to answer these provocative questions.
Example topics may include but are not limited to:
- Re-conceiving library spaces and services: new purposes, new partners
- Emerging workflows and best practices in digitization and digital preservation
- Issues surrounding 21st-century scholarly communication: copyright, open access
- Supporting faculty in digital scholarship, digital humanities, and research
- Assessment in the Library: demonstrating the library’s contributions
- Innovations in the delivery of content: eBooks, ILL, patron-initiated purchasing
- Instruction and Outreach: in information literacy programming and engagement
- Getting to know our users: ethnographic research, usability studies
- When cultures collide: changing perceptions of libraries’ roles and missions
- Integrating discovery tools and library management systems
- Lessons learned working with archives, repositories, and publishing platforms
- Campus and community outreach and partnerships
Systems and Solutions: Enterprise, Infrastructure, Security, and Support:
No matter the size or scale of the institution, user expectations are always high, and systems are always assumed to run efficiently and without any glitches. But keeping systems stable and agile, secure yet accessible, and complex but easy to use is no easy task. How does an IT department implement best practices, provide cutting-edge innovation, and remain cost-effective – all at the same time? This track offers examples and ideas from the broadest range of institutions – from Ivies to community colleges – that can help us all understand some of the creative and non-traditional solutions to age-old and new problems in enterprise computing. Whether it’s keeping up with the instantaneous tech expectations of our students, the work-from-everywhere needs of our faculty, or the dashboard-and-data demands of our top-level executives, come and share your stories of experiences and challenges for the benefit of the community.
The rapid pace of innovation in technology offers exciting opportunities for education professionals. Still, it also brings a corresponding need for flexible support services and delivery processes to keep up with the challenge of constant change. Whether your institution is evaluating and implementing new technologies and support practices or has successfully updated your IT service operation’s technologies and procedures, this track invites you to share your strategies for providing effective and efficient IT support services and solutions to an ever-changing set of faculty, students, and administrators with uniformly high expectations.
Additionally, protecting critical data and services in a culture that highly values openness and accessibility presents unique challenges. With increasing numbers moving to “the cloud” and more and more data available on mobile devices, how institutions deal with protecting data outside the control of central IT is a monumental challenge faced by every institution, no matter its size or focus. How campuses deal with issues such as the appeal and value of sites such as Facebook and Twitter, the growing legal complexities surrounding data protection and personal privacy, and the consumerization of IT and the spiraling use of personal devices for work purposes is of increasing importance to IT managers and academic administrators. This track seeks to highlight the role that campus policies and regulations, along with the growing technical challenges of securing devices and data, play in our institution's daily work and to allow institutions to share their thorniest problems, brainstorm some attainable goals, and present examples of policy approaches and accomplishments.
Example topics may include but are not limited to:
- Green IT
- Virtualization
- Cloud Computing
- Software as a Service
- Identity/Access Management
- Document and Records Management
- Building a PM culture that extends into the business and technical domains
- Unified Communications
- Data De-duplication
- Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity/Backup Strategies
- Administrative/ERP Systems and Integration
- Systems Integration
- SDLCs and software release management
- Help desk support applications (IM, Ticketing, self-service, remote support, etc.)
- Central vs. distributed support models
- Best Practices (ITIL v3, Pink Elephant, Six Sigma, COBIT 4.1, etc.)
- Classroom technologies and design (Computers, multimedia, and Smart Technologies, clickers, podiums, etc.)
- Students: consultant programs and technology support (ResNet)
- Training and documentation development
- Information and computer literacy programs
- Workstation standards, management, and peripheral support (multi-use printers, handheld devices, unified messaging, VoIP, virtual desktops, etc.)
- Media services (asset management, scheduling, event support, audio-visual equipment, etc.)
- Managing software licenses and software access
- Hardware access and distribution programs
- Support for distribution of streaming, podcasting, distance learning, etc.
- The evolving role of the Information Security Officer
- Policy development and governance models
- Identity and access management policies
- Policies that address emerging technologies
- Policies on cloud services and social media
- Strategies to manage the impact of social media on institutional brand/identity
- E-commerce challenges such as PCI compliance, mobile merchant accounts
- Information security awareness, education and communication
- Secure guest and/or remote access
- Security audits, penetration testing
- Data classification schemas
- Endpoint security/remediation strategies
- Data encryption tools
- Data and network security risk assessment
- Incident response/computer forensics
- Intrusion detection and prevention
Teaching, Learning, and Student Success:
The changes that have taken place in teaching and learning over the past ten years have been dramatic, and technology has been a motivating force behind many of them. From active and project-based learning to increasingly sophisticated means for engaging students online, the nature of higher education pedagogy has undergone a true transformation. This track focuses on the richness of these new approaches, methodologies, and techniques, which seeks to demonstrate the innovation and creativity that so many professors, instructional designers, and tech support professionals bring to their classrooms (both physical and virtual). All manner of teaching, learning, and student success stories are welcome as we share in each other’s triumphs – and “back to the drawing board” moments.
The range of questions includes:
- How are digital technologies transforming the enterprise of teaching, learning, and assessment in higher education, both in the classroom and beyond?
- How does the use of technology transform faculty and student interactions?
In what ways can the digital landscape support diverse learning styles and engage increasingly mobile and continually networked students?
- How can we know if our use of technology improves the learning experience for our students? How can we assess our use of technology?
- What opportunities are on the horizon -- what developments should we be paying attention to?
- How do we put theory into practice?
Example topics may include but are not limited to:
- Strategies for faculty development and support, along with best practices for supporting change, innovation, and emerging technologies.
- Approaches to providing applications and resources for mobile learners.
- Determining the effectiveness of learning space design.
- The evolution of the learning management system.
- Assessment strategies for learning, course improvement, accreditation, technology adoption decision-making, etc.
- Models for project planning, development, and instructional design
- Use of assistive technologies and principles of universal design
- Using mobile technology to make service easier
- Creating one-stop shopping
- Using software or business processes to improve recruitment or retention
- Improving student community experience
- Innovative ways to engage with students (or to keep students engaged with the campus community)
- Leveraging cloud-based solutions as a cost-effective means to enhance the student experience
**Data-Driven Decision Making:
Although data-driven decision-making is not a current track, we welcome proposals in our other tracks focused on this area. Promises of transforming our institutions and the lives of our students through the collection and analysis of data now seem plausible and within reach, but the majority of us need to learn a lot more about how to actually do it. If your institution has been successful in developing and using dashboards, predictive modeling, reporting & analytics, and business intelligence, this track is the place to share those experiences, processes, and insights that can help faculty and administrators in measurable ways.
Example topics may include but are not limited to:
- Leveraging predictive modeling and analytics to assist with enrollment or retention
- Creating dashboards that matter
- Breaking down the silos of data
- How to become a data-driven institution
- Business intelligence/Data Management
- Learning Analytics
- Using data to optimize student learning in digital environments
Professional Development Formats and Modes of Delivery
- One-Day In-Person Workshops (generally five hours of content with invited speakers). These can also include unconferences (less structured learning) and User Groups.
- Online Workshops (generally 2-3 hours in length and use Zoom)
-Online Webinars (generally 1 hour in length and use Zoom)
-Online Thought Partner Programs (informal and conversational sessions; between 1-7 one-hour sessions)
-Online NERCOMP CLASS (Collaborate, Listen, Accelerate, Share, and Support): mini deep-dives that explore important issues through group work, providing frameworks for use, and artifact submissions, which generally result in a digital credential.
- Series (workshops that consist of a group of sessions over a span of time) – e.g., Managers Series)